Prof Mushirul Hasan was an alumnus of the University whose academic accomplishments made AMU proud of, said a statement from the varsity.

Prof Mushirul Hasan has done extensive work on partition and on the history of Islam in South-Asia.

Aligarh:

The demise of distinguished historian, Professor Mushirul Hasan has saddened the entire fraternity of the Aligarh Muslim University, his alma-matter. Prof Hasan was an alumnus of the University whose academic accomplishments made AMU proud of, said a statement from the varsity. He did his schooling from the AMU's STS High School (Minto Circle); obtained BA (History Honours) and MA from the Department of History, AMU.

After teaching history in a college in Delhi, he left for the Cambridge and earned his PhD from there.

His PhD thesis on nationalism and communal politics in India during 1885-1930 broke a ground, when it was published, and ran into many editions. Later, his meticulously well-researched works on India's partition got wide scale citations by the scholars across the globe.

Expressing his grief on the loss of an illustrious alumnus, Prof Tariq Mansoor, the AMU Vice Chancellor, said that his death has created a great void in the world of scholarship on Modern and contemporary Indian History.

Prof Hasan has done extensive work on the Partition of India and on the history of Islam in South-Asia.

In 2002, Prof Hasan was elected as the President of Indian History Congress. He also served as the Director-General of the National Archives of India.

Prof Hasan was admitted to the hospital on Sunday night. He breathed his last at 4 am on Monday.

"He met with a road accident about two years ago and was mostly bed-ridden after that. He was also undergoing dialysis for kidney problems," former secretary to Jamia Vice chancellor, Zafar Nawaz Hashmi, said.

Most distinguished of Prof Hasan's long research essays were on: Muslim Mass Contact Campaign of the 1930s; Nationalist Trends in Aligarh; his book (1997) on India's Muslims since Independence, and on, Pluralism in Awadh, got wider appreciation.